Together
by iuree
Summary: Minato never had been the most expressive, preferring to close off any emotions rather than ruin the poker face that masked anything aside from disinterest. It normally irked Minako, but it made her want to scream with frustration after Ryoji dully explained what he was, what her brother had to do, and Minato simply shut himself off from the world.


She didn't remember the last time Minato was like this.

Sure, he'd always been moody and impassive at times, but he just... entirely shut down after Ryoji's confession on the full moon. Like a machine. Like Aigis.

It stung to be shunned by her own brother, but Minako understood all too well that he needed his space. But it had nearly been two weeks and he'd hardly spoken other than responding to teacher's questions in class or giving clipped orders during the Dark Hour. He'd been returning to the dorm immediately after school and locking himself in his room, silently ignoring the notes she'd pushed under the door.

And as selfish as it sounds, it infuriated her.

Not like an explosive anger, no; it was more of a slowly burning frustration that mounted more and more within her with each ignored word until-

It was almost the Dark Hour. Late enough most the other dorm mates were either asleep or in their rooms studying with the exception of Junpei, who was likely playing one of his portable games. Minako shifted her vermilion gaze to her friend's door, mouth twitching into half a smile before settling back in a frown as she turned her attention back to her brother's plain door. She knocked once, for show at least. No response. Of course.

"Minato, let me in," she called, careful to keep her voice low to avoid disturbing the other boys. She waited a moment (no noise to even suggest he so much as moved) before adding, "I have spicy shrimp chips."

That at least garnered some rustling on the other side of the door.

"And if you don't open that door and let me in right now, I'll pick the lock and eat the whole bag in front of you."

A few moments before a telltale creak of the floor announced movement just before the door swung open and Minato - haggard, with limp hair seemingly doing its damnedest to cover the dark circles beneath his eyes - stood before her expectantly. "You're cruel," he said in a coarse, raw voice, and for a moment her pent-up anger melted away in lieu of her more dominant sister instincts to kick whoever's ass did this to him. But the yet stronger sister urge to kick her brother's ass took hold again, even forgetting the sobering fact that the former idea had her kicking Ryoji's ass.

"You look like shit," she said bluntly, stepping past him into his room. It was surprisingly clean given his state, with just dirty clothes littering the floor. She'd expected more wrappers and empty water bottles.

"Cool," he said flatly, closing the door with a decisive click. Minato held out a hand, red-rimmed gray eyes boring into hers balefully, "Gimme shrimps."

She could've been an ass, but Minako was _nice_ and _forgiving_. _Almost saintly,_ she thought, popping the bag open and holding it so Minato could get a handful of the spicy red chips.

"We're _not_ going to talk about what happened with him," he added after munching a few chips. He pushed his long bangs to the side. God, he looked like he'd only slept an hour throughout the entire exam week. She felt exhausted just by looking at him. "That's why you're here, yeah?"

Minako's mouth puckered in a deeper frown. "I'm here because we're worried about you. I'm worried about you." She sat on his bed, and her brother soon followed suit, mattress sagging beneath their weight.

A stormy expression crossed his face and he mirrored her bitter expression. _If you say some 'woe is me' crap..._ "No, that's none of anyone's business. And that's about it, so we won't be talking about that."

Her facade fractured for a moment, serious expression twisting angry. "Minato, he's still Ryoji. Except..." she struggled to find the words, "Except he remembers. And we can't not talk about what happened, that's ridiculous." She shook her head, loose brunette hair falling behind her shoulders. "We're sorting through this and we're doing it tonight. I don't have any Mad Bull to keep us up, but I think we'll be fine without for now." She cracked a grin. Minato looked unimpressed.

"Even if I wanted to talk, I've been trying to sort it out for the past however long since the full moon and so far," he made a wry face, "Nothing's clear."

"I'm not saying we need to figure out if we need to..." _Kill Ryoji._ She swallowed the hard lump in her throat at the idea. He'd asked them to kill him, but her stomach turned at the concept of killing her friend and the boy who'd managed to make her brother open up and feel - something she'd been trying to do for _years._ "We don't need to make any decisions tonight, especially not on that. Not by ourselves." Minako was earnest, giving him her patented younger-sister-by-twelve-minutes pleading eyes, "I just want to find out how to help you, since finding out he was sealed in you for so long must've been awful."

Minato looked sour. "I'm fine," he snapped, not fine. He crunched a handful of chips spitefully.

"Bull _shit,_ you're fine." She snapped and rose from his bed, standing squarely in front of where he was sitting. "I know you well enough that I know for a fact that no, you're not _'fine.'_ And you know me well enough to know I won't leave you alone until you tell me what I can do to at least share some of that burden. Please, just... let me help."

His expression had softened a bit, but flared angry at her last broken sentence. "You want to help? Is that it?" He mirrored her, standing before her. "You want to know what I've been thinking about this whole time? How if I hadn't gotten out of that car, maybe Nyx might not have come, and maybe the Dark Hour wouldn't exist." His voice was rising, as if forgetting where he was. Or maybe he hadn't, and the bottle broke to the point he just didn't care who heard. Gray eyes burning with passion like she had just dropped a match on his gasoline-drenched woes, he continued.

"And maybe, if I had just died then, this all could have been avoided. If we were never on that bridge, the world could have just kept turning without me letting Death leech off me like a _parasite_ ," Minato spat, words full of poison for his former best friend.

She bristled at that and out of sheer habit, bounced herself up to his height. She'd adopted the habit when they were eight and he had just started to gain height over her, and hadn't really dropped it. They'd had entire arguments with her on her tiptoes without even batting an eye, and Minako didn't see a reason to stop now. "Is that what you really think?" she said, dumbfounded. Unbidden and unwelcome, tears began to wet her eyes and she did her best to silently will them back. "Are you serious? You really think it'd be better if you died with mom and dad that night?" _Damn it._ Hot tears welled up and quickly fell, streaking her flushed cheeks.

"You're such a dumbass, oh my god!" She perched up even taller, rising above even her brother's height, and shoved him back, making them both stumble. "You know what would've happened then? Huh? _I was there too!_ If you died, I would have been left completely alone, in exactly the same damn situation as you're in right now! So don't tell me you're better off dead when all that would be different is all your friends and everyone you've ever been close to would know loss like Akihiko, like Junpei, like us!" She was shouting now, but could absolutely not care any less right then.

Minako jabbed a finger at his chest. Her brother was staring, wide eyed, at her outburst and she reveled in his shock. "You want to know a secret, Minato? You want to know something I've kept buried for this entire decade since the crash? You withdrew after the wreck. You turned quiet and sad and apathetic. You spent a decade too busy drowning in your own self-centered misery I never got the chance to mourn!"

"I had to be the cheerful one, the friendly one who had to convince everyone how good of a person you really are. I couldn't ever show any signs I hurt too, that I wanted to cry and scream and mourn, but I never got that opportunity! And any time I did, you only blamed yourself for my pain and withdrew even more, and I'm so sick of it!" The tears came freely now, distorting her voice with emotion.

"If I hadn't put on that mask every day-" she began, but Minato spoke over her, rising onto his toes as well to match her.

"Oh, _fuck that!"_ He pointed a finger right back at her, dangerous glint in his eye. "I have my own way of coping. It may not work well, but it's better than bottling everything up for ten years only to blow up when you could have let us grieve together and move on."

"Grieve together? Are you joking?" She laughed bitterly in his face. "You didn't grieve, you wallowed. We are not playing a game of who is better, because while I might be numb to the very real apocalypse happening, I'm trying to carry on as usual where you lock yourself away from anyone who cares about you to mope! I'm not the one who's being reckless in Tartarus just because Death showed his face and looked like a fried." At his bewildered reaction, she added, "Do you really think you can run headfirst into every Shadow there and expect any of your team, especially Mitsuru, to not voice concern with me? You could have died, and now I know why you act like you want to!"

"Well, I seem to be doing alright with it so far!" Minato's voice rose even higher to a genuine shout. "What are you so afraid of? That I might die? We're all going to die when Nyx comes, and-"

 _"Minato!"_ One word, but sharp enough to make him pause in his tracks. She had all but frozen in a stiff stance, eyes still glistening with unshed tears and lip trembling and at once, realization dawned on his face.

Minato sunk down, looking deflated and old and tired.

"I'm not him, Minako," he said, quietly this time. "Shinjiro had-"

"Don't."

"Minako-"

"You're on some very, very thin ice right now." Her voice was raw, dangerously low. Another bout of tears threatened, but she held out.

Where a normal person would have laid off, or even given her space, there's a special area siblings tend to have with each other that gave a bit more leeway at times. This was one of those times.

"I'm sorry about what happened to Shinjiro, but we have both lost people before and will again if we don't find some way to stop Nyx," he said in a measured voice, enunciating each syllable. "And I can't help but feel like we need to train more, to reach the top of Tartarus to try doing that. So excuse me if I may seem a little desperate to do so before the new year. If we find some way to stop Nyx, to stop the apocalypse, I don't care if I die or not. I care more that everyone I leave behind has a chance to live."

She stared for a heartbeat. Then two. Minako took a breath to steady herself before responding with the same amount of care put into her words as her brother.

"Everyone I love has either died or left me alone." Her voice rose again, words coming faster and more hysterical with each word. "Everyone except- fucking, except for you. So don't spew this bullshit about how your death will be better for everyone when the truth is, all you'd do is force us to mourn yet another person we love!"

Tears were spilling again and she grabbed his shirt and from the way he closed his eyes and winced, he clearly expected her to punch him and oh, how she wanted to. She didn't punch him and instead wrapped him in a tight hug, burying her face in his shoulder. "Don't be a moron," she said to his shirt that she was probably snotting all over.

After a few moments, she felt a few hot tears splash on the back of her shirt and a hand clutching the back of said shirt tightly. "Idiot," she accused teasingly, no venom in the tired word.

"...I'll be more careful from now on. And we'll find a way to stop all this," Minato sounded exhausted and come to think of it, she was too. "And if you want... we can both visit Shinjiro tomorrow after school."

She only sniffled in response, holding him tighter and they simply just stood there together for a while.

"God, we're so screwed up," she eventually said, laughing a bit, resting her forehead on Minato's shoulder.

"Yeah," he agreed simply.

They were silent for a moment. "You know, we're going to have to talk more about our crap later. Where we're not yelling at each other half the time." Minato said.

"Yeah," she reluctantly agreed. "It can wait for another day, though. I'm pooped."

"Definitely."

"How much of that you think Junpei heard?" she asked, wincing slightly. "Oh geez, how much you think Aki heard?"

"Minako, I'm pretty sure _Shinji_ heard a good chunk of that."

She had to giggle a little at that. "Yeah, I bet he heard all of it."

Another long pause.

"Do you mind if I stay here tonight?"

"You just want to steal my shrimp chips."

"You got me. I'm a chip thief."

He paused.

"...Yeah. I... I don't want to be alone right now."


End file.
